Life in motion
by constantinterruptions
Summary: Short shikatema drabbles.
1. Mismatched

"You know we're terrible together right?" Temari poked him in the middle of his ribs as she said this. Wincing, Shikamaru rubbed the area which her bony finger had jabbed him, it was probably still going to bruise. He sighed, they had just spent the night doing what she wanted, which essentially was doing what was to be part of a normal date night for other couples. They had gone for dinner at a decent restaurant, he was worn his nice blazer, she had worn her heels and those red earrings which made him want to kiss her neck as he watched them sway. They had watched a shitty rom-com which they both hated but endured through so they could pretend to be absolutely _functional_ and not at all dysfunctional and headed for a messy divorce.

They had done everything their stupid shrink wanted. And to be honest, they had done it _perfectly. _ Both he and Temari were smart and intelligent people and so along with the date, there had been no jibes, no snide remarks, no complains about "troublesome women" and no arguments which ended in stomping out of restaurants, a night on the couch and screaming. It had been absolutely untroublesome and even, dare he say it, boring.

Temari had obviously noticed him thinking about their lackluster date and so she sighed. How could she not? They had been together for five years and he was staring at the spot over their tv as if he was staring at a chess piece when they played shougi, he knew that she knew that this was more than troublesome.

"Shikamaru," Temari muttered. It had been months since she had called him by his name. Usually, she substituted it with 'Nara' or 'you' or 'lazy', he didn't like this.

"I don't know if this is working anymore."

Her statement hung in the air, heavy with apprehension.

He choked.

"You cannot be serious."

Temari turned towards him. He was surprised by the look in her eyes. The fire that had heated and warmed those green-blue eyes which he had fallen into had been left cold, the embers barely smoldering.

"You know I would never joke about these things."

He licked his lips. The dry air was making them peel. He breathed.

"We always worked."

"We're not working anymore."

She had turned away from him, she probably had tears in her eyes. She never did like him to see her cry, always said that it was too 'demeaning'. He never thought it was, he just saw it as another side of the beautiful beautiful woman that he married, the vulnerable side that made his heart twinge and curl in that troublesome way that he loved and hated.

"We will still work, just give us a shot Temari."

"We've tried for five years."

They did. There was the marriage counselling. There were the 'I love yous' which they said every morning to each other because Naruto and Hinata did it and they were the most picture perfect couple that you could know. There were the kisses on the cheek and sex every night which was supposed to give more intimacy. But they were making hate instead of love. He slammed her against the table for the eye roll she had made at him this morning, she bit him till he bled for calling her troublesome, he scratched her for looking at that man like she wanted him. They fought all night and when they were done, they helped each other to their bed and slept, turning away from each other.

"I still love you, you know."

He wondered if telling her that would make her change her mind. He knew that the possibility of changing it was miniscule, after all she had already been desensitized to all the little 'I love yous' they had said each morning. But this one was different, this one was a plea and he wondered if she would notice it.

"I know," was all she said. She stared forth into the darkness of their living room, her hand slowly creeping towards his until their thumbs met and then their indexes and then the rest of their hands, so that both curled into one another like foxes hibernating for the winter. He smiled ironically. This was how they had first began, with small imperceptible gestures filled with awkward shyness. He was twenty one, she was twenty four, he was a junior in college and she had just made associate partner at a law firm. And while Temari may have been the epitome of sex, he had been far from it hence all the awkward sexual tension and uncomfortable gestures of infatuation or lust or love. He had loved her so much for tolerating the stupid little things he used to do. He loved her for remembering them and returning them.

"We'll work it out Tem, we'll work it out our way."

He broke the comfortable silence. This was a first for him, he had never dared to or wanted to break silences as comfortable and intimate as these but this time, the situation seemed dire enough. And what did he have to lose? As a child, he had learned from his father that love was more than kissing and nick-names, love was indescribable. He understood that but relationships weren't just about love. However, maybe this time relationships could be like love, they never did have one solution to them. And maybe this time, amidst the ruckus and the screaming and the flaring tempers, they could make it through. If only she would look at him and tell him that she understood, that she accepted. Maybe just maybe they could stop going to that bloody therapist who psycho-analyzed their relationships and called them mismatched, maybe they could be that couple who played shougi on Saturday nights and watched Netflix on Friday nights to jeer at Katherine Hiegl instead of going out to eat and socialize like other couples did. They were an odd couple but they were still a couple. If only Temari would understand that.

What she said next made his heart stop.

"I'll call the therapist in the morning and tell her to fuck off."

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><p>Reviews are love 3<p> 


	2. Mommy issues

Mommy issues.

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><p>Temari never liked grass. She hated botany because it reminded her too much of her mother. In fact, she reminded herself too much of her mother with the green-blue eyes, the dirty blonde hair and the fan. Chiyo always did say that her mother liked fans.<p>

She came to the realization that she hated botany when her father walked into the greenhouse when she was fourteen and choked on air. The papers fall from his hands and he would run out of the greenhouse like a madman, almost as if Gaara had been chasing after him with bloodlust in his eyes. Rasa of the sands, the wielder of the golden dust would run like a child caught stealing apples from her, a fourteen year old girl.

Chiyo had hugged her and told her it was because Karura loved gardening and it was the hair and posture which made her just like her mother. And of course that her father just could not stand the collective weight of memories.

So Temari changed. She tied her hair into four spiky ponytails, she wore the skirts and dresses which would have made her mother blush, she wielded the huge metallic fan which her mother considered cumbersome and overly masculine, she rejected the chance to become a medic nin under Chiyo just like her mother had. She didn't want to be the hypocritical healer her mother had been, she preferred to save lives on the battlefield, an active instead of a passive actor in conflict. She became the caustic, ice-cold, bitter as a balsam pear bitch which her domesticated and tangerine sweet mother was not.

And why? Because she never wanted to be her mother. Her mother was weak, her mother allowed for her own son to be inflicted with the Shukaku, her mother allowed the rest of her children to live in fear of her husband and her youngest child. Temari would have never allowed that. She would have kicked, scratched and run away with her children. She would have rather killed her child than to have left them at the mercy of the Shukaku and her cold-hearted husband.

"Don't you look strange."

Temari pivoted around towards the source of the derisive voice, her eyes narrowing. Her dirty blonde hair framed her face stopping short somewhere below her shoulder. It was already irritating enough that her hair ties had snapped and now she probably had to handle the off-handed comments which compared her to her mother.

"Fuck off," she muttered and rolled her eyes. Shikamaru strode towards her, yawning. She could already imagine the soon to be quizzical look that would be painted on his face as he asked what possessed her to let her hair down.

"Calm down, it's a change, not a nice change but you can still pull it off."

His lackadaisical voice hid a small smirk which she caught. Fucking asshole, always trying to rile her up.

"Excuse me?" she near shrieked, "I can damn well pull of this look. In fact, many people say I look like my mother this way and goddamn if she was not stunning."

The statement flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself. _Fucking idiot, _she screamed internally, the comment itself made her want to bang her head against the wall in apology to the ideals which had shaped her life. Fancy, ignoring all the reasons to love being Sabaaku no Temari for something as frivolous as being pretty or even worse, winning an argument against Shikamaru.

"Troublesome," muttered Shikamaru, scratching his head, in a half-hearted attempt to placate the irate woman who looked more than ready to beat him to a bloody pulp with her oversized fan. "Look, what I was saying was that you look to domestic with the hair down and all."

"Too domestic?"

Okay, maybe that was a slightly better answer. After all few things were worse than 'it's a change, not a nice change but you can still pull it off'.

"Your old hair made you look like you were going to beat the shit out of someone, this," he paused to point at her curling tresses, "just makes you look like you're an angry woman who's about to beat the shit out of someone trying to pretend to be a trophy wife."

Temari's eyes narrowed and watched silently as Shikamaru winced, perhaps internally preparing for an outpouring for her rage through a shouting match or even a brutal beating. Instead, she nodded and gave a small smile.

"Good answer."

Sometimes, it was nice to step out of her mother's shadow.


	3. Patterns

Patterns.

Inoichi was there when Shikaku had first met Yoshino. He saw the pointed gaze Shikaku had given the woman and how he had later shrugged it off almost as if Yoshino was just another irritating fly, a harmless civilian who bore no consequences on his plans. Inoichi had initially assumed so as well but when Yoshino began hanging around more and Shikaku began giving her more of his pointed gazes, Inoichi would grow to recognize that look.

It was an unmistakable look, although there were slight differences from how he normally stared at other people. This one was more relaxed and tense, almost as if the boy was thinking of a million strategies and a million ways to move forward while simultaneously trying to upkeep the façade of nonchalance. Inoichi wasn't in the Anbu interrogation team for nothing and he was pretty damn good at reading and remembering facial expressions. He memorized that look for good measure and an emotive best man's speech.

Inoichi was also there when Shikaku had gone on his first date with Yoshino. Well technically, it wasn't a date. Both of them denied that it was. And when Inoichi had appeared out of an alley, he had seen them walking side by side. It was just their expression; Shikaku's aggravated scowl and Yoshino's smirk which made him think that this was more than some little outing that the cryptography department was taking. And besides there was no one else there which hence made it a date in his twenty year old mind.

"So are you both on a date?" Inoichi sang after he had snuck up behind them, slinging his arms around his best friend and the petite Yoshino. He knew that there was a shit-eating grin on his face, he knew the immediate look of fear that would come over Shikaku and how his friend would suppress it, rolling his eyes and tell him in muted tones to fuck off and he knew that Yoshino would immediately threaten to castrate him but goddamn the entertainment value was priceless.

"Please like I would ever date Nara." Yoshino had sneered, scowling at the man beside her while rattling on his laundry list of sins which ranged from his laziness to his chauvinism which made her hate him even more. Judging from the annoyed look on his friend's face and the disgust which was written into every line of Yoshino's, Inoichi figured his job as cupid was done and left.

And he had of course been right. Yoshino and Shikaku would go on many other dinners for the next four years, all of them completely professional in order to increase the productivity of cryptography department. Until one day, Shikaku asked her to marry him in what Inoichi considered the most stupid way to propose. He had apparently, according to Yoshino, complained about the food at one of the fast food outlets they had visited and then proposed that they save time, money and their tastebuds by having her to become his permanent chef. Then he slid the ring across the greasy table towards her and quirked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.

Yoshino had naturally said no. And her refusal came with Shikaku being unceremoniously thrown out of the restaurant along with his ring.

She still married him anyway, after the second proposal which was better rehearsed and a lot less misogynistic.

So when Inoichi saw Shikamaru playing shougi with the blonde sand kunoichi and giving her those same pointed looks, he knew.

His assumptions were further confirmed when he saw them walking down the street after one of their official lunches between the liaisons of Suna and Konoha. Their forced nonchalance, the more than safe distance between them and the snarky tone of their conversation told him so. The way she called him 'Nara', almost as if she was repulsed of his name would further cause him to stamp his seal of approval on their relationship.

"Hey Shikamaru," he came up to the boy the same way he had done to his father during his date with Yoshino, "are you guys dating?"

The mortification which was written on Shikamaru's face and the disgust and annoyance which Temari's face twisted into almost made him choke on his laughter.

Inoichi believed in patterns and genetic inheritance, his interrogation squad training had taught him as much. Nara men were meant to marry troublesome women. In short, those two were perfect for each other.


	4. Sacrifices

He joined the Anbu two months after the war ended. It wasn't like he had any say in the matter or at least that was he had told himself. Joining the Anbu was never about whether you wanted to or not, it was a matter of if the Hokage handed you a scroll and asked you nicely to do it or if you preferred to be castigated to a desk job and be branded incompetent for the rest of your life.

Shikamaru initially had no qualms about being branded an incompetent bum after all he had breezed through his life on shougi, clouds and being labelled an incompetent bum. His academy test scores would be testament of his apathy to being branded as a lazy slacker.

Hence, Kakashi would choke on his whisky laced coffee when Nara Shikamaru, knocked on the door of his office and told him that he would be 'happy' to become part of the Anbu. Not that he was 'obligated' to or he was 'forced' to become part of the elite squad but that he was 'happy'. He immediately forced the boy to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

It normally took three years to go through Anbu training, Shikamaru took two. There were different modules one had to memorize by heart, how to kill using untraceable jutsus, human anatomy, torture and interrogation, all of which the boy learnt in record speed. He seemed hardened, impenetrable by the violence around him. His instructors attributed it to the war, he knew it was not.

During his sojourn in the training camps, he never stopped learning. Fighting styles came naturally to him, his brain simply took them as part of a formula which he remembered and forced himself to accept. In the nights, he would feel his muscles scream in agony, his lungs on fire from chakra exhaustion, sometimes his vision went hazy on the field as he fought. He ignored all this to think of wind and her citrus smell.

"Stop pushing yourself so hard," the dark haired medic nin at the camp told him, "you might die like this."

Nodding silently, he would accept the stitches or the bandages that came with his wounds and return back to his training. It was easy and mindless, there was no need for strategy when it came down to an Anbu fight. It was just simple kicking, punching and reflex. The one time he had paused to think about his next move, he found his instructor's kunai to his throat. "I'll fucking slash your throat to ribbons the next time you stop to think," the man spat at him.

The Anbu was soulless, thoughtless. As Anbu, you were agents of the state, soldiers with more power but less freedom. They were the drones which the village sent to annihilate all possible problems. He stopped looking at clouds, he didn't want the freedom they had.

His hardest module was interrogation. Yugao, that bitch, had known about _her_, and decided to bring in a girl with the same sandy blonde hair and dark eyes for him to experiment on. The girl had been nothing like Temari, she had cried and begged for mercy. Temari would have never done that, she would have spat and cursed and lied and tempted but she would have never begged. He still had to torture her. As he slit her pale skin, he felt her squirm underneath him, he heard her screams. His brain replaced them with images of the girl who had saved him during the war, smirking through the blood which ran down her face. He stopped. "What the fuck are you doing?" screamed Ibiki, "continue."

He couldn't. That night he received three lashes for his disobedience, the blood coursed down his back. The dark haired medic nin at the camp clicked her tongue and went to stitching up the marks. He heard from her that the girl had been killed anyway. He hoped that it was an easy death.

The module after interrogation, torture was a cake walk. They essentially strapped him to a chair and tortured him until he spoke. They cut him and he remained silent. Scars already littered his body and Temari had once said they made shinobi look attractive, he smiled at the memory. Ibiki took the smile as rebellion and the knife they used became blunter. They shocked him, whipped him, almost drowned him. Through it all, he remained silent, he thought of wind and her dark green blue eyes glaring at him, warning him not to make a sound.

He passed the module with flying colours.

By the time his training was over, it had been two years. He wanted to sigh with relief at the thought or do something cliché and human, mutter troublesome under his breath, to show how happy he was. He found himself unable to. The mask he got, did however make him laugh. The weasel face which stared up at his, made him smile at the irony. He wondered if she still remembered him, he had already forgotten what she looked like.

Initially he had been posted as part of the assassination squad. Kagemane was prized because of its ability to trap and hold people down, it was the perfect technique when working with a partner. His shadow sewing was even more prized because of the neat and seamless way it could conduct kills, they would literally be no blood on his hands. He wondered if Temari minded such distance between her and her enemies, she seemed to wild and too carefree for such mechanical procedures. He wondered why he still thought of her.

His bunkmate, Wantanabe had been assigned to Suna. He liked Wantanabe, he was quiet, decorous and relatively intelligent. Shikamaru had played shougi with him in camp. Sure it had been a training exercise but the restraint that Wantanabe showed impressed him and reminded him of Chouji. When he slid the blade of his tanto over Wantanabe's throat after learning how he could replace Wantanabe as the assignee to Suna, he wondered if the dry and arid weather would suit his skin better.

It did not. Suna was hot and dry, it cracked his lips and scalded his skin a bright red. Wordlessly, he followed Konoha's new ambassador around day after day, a silent ghost dressed in a white robe. It would be his third month in Suna that he would see her.

Something stirred within him when he looked upon that defiant face and those rebellious green blue eyes framed by untidy blonde hair. For a moment, he stood breath taken by the sight of who he had initially deemed to be a stranger. Then he recognized her and wondered if he had ever felt so alive.

She was beautiful. It had been two years but she still remained sharp as a sickle, vicious and intelligent. She was Technicolor, focal point from the shades of grey that Anbu had taught him to appreciate. He didn't think he could deal with an grey Temari. "A

nbu eh?" she laughed, looking over the ambassador's shoulder, "I see Kakashi's still as paranoid as ever."

That night, he climbed into her apartment. Hidden behind the Kazekage tower, it was a nondescript block painted beige and white. He crept in through her window and a kunai whizzed past his face. Temari stood before him, her fan unfolded, a hand upon a jutted hip. She hit him with her fan, the metal club slammed into his ribs and he felt them crack. His shadows cut her, they slashed at her skin and opened the stitches that had been previously closed.

"Another fucking assassination attempt?" She cried and slammed her fan once more towards his figure, he blocked with his tanto.

"Temari, stop," he drawled and she stepped back, shocked by his voice.

Her eyes narrowed, "Shikamaru, what are you doing here? Are you here to kill me?" There was no hint of betrayal or anguish in her voice, just plain pure irony which she often used. This was Temari, the same old Temari he had fought at thirteen, the Temari he had escorted around his village at fourteen, fallen in love with at fifteen.

"No," he replied and took off his mask. Her eyebrows quirked at the animal he had been assigned with. "I'm here to protect you?"

"Protect me?"

"Two months after the end of the Great war, you had four assassination attempts on your life. In the past two years, you've had fifteen." He remarked.

She snarled, "if you don't remember from your reports, I killed most of the idiots who came after me." Her knuckles were white from gripping her fan.

"The last one that came left you with four broken ribs and poisoned you." He recited, his eyes closing from the effort, "you could have died."

"I still don't need you to save me," he could hear her gritting her teeth in anger. "I can do that by myself."

He sat down on the windowstill, wincing from the pain emanating from his ribs and watched her in the moonlight. She almost looked like her mother, just vicious and feral.

"A man is meant to save a woman after all," he repeated the chauvinistic adage which he often used to justify his actions to her. Temari rolled her eyes. But the derision in her face drained as she beganto smile with nostalgia, all trace of anger erased from her face with youthful remembrance. She still liked purple, he noted, her dress was a light lilac fringed with navy blue. He wondered if she still hated flowers and liked tofu soup.

"I'll make you some tea," she said, breaking him out of his reverie. It was her peace offering, she moved past him to the kitchen. Shikamaru leaned back in his seat. There were so many words unspoken. Like how he had meant to initially save her but now needed her more than ever to save himself.


	5. Power

She always cheated. From card games to shougi, Temari cheated because she loved to win. Not that cheating at shougi was going to help her win against Shikamaru, it just helped to breach the gap between them and that was good enough for her because losing to a genius was always infinitely better than losing badly to a genius.

Sometimes she wondered if he noticed that she had shifted a pawn, swapped a bishop for a knight, all little tricks which were seemingly undetectable to a regular chess player. He never said anything, just accepted his increasingly arduous win with grace and asked her if she wanted more tea; so she assumed that he never did notice.

Just like how he played his chess games, he was slow and prudent. Too slow and prudent, Shikamaru took too much time with the details, too much time contemplating and thinking through every strategy and every possible move. He may have been the perfect chess player but he most certainly was not the perfect mate.

Mate. Temari couldn't believe that she would use that word. But hell, it was a hell of a lot better than _boyfriend_, the word itself sounded juvenile. And they were adults for godssake, state-sanctioned killers, surely their potential (and in her case, ideal) relationship couldn't be given such a trivial term.

She was digressing. Shikamaru took too long to do anything or he was simply trying to evade all her moves. She herself was rather unsure if bringing her cloud watching was an attempt to reaffirm their friendship, similar to how he frequently watched the clouds with Chouji, or his own strange way of hinting at his attraction for her. Initially, she had assumed that shougi was Shikamaru's equivalent of a date but then as she learned of how he had pestered Asuma to play with him, those thoughts were evaporated.

Shikamaru was complex, he was not the textbook man she had learned about in her training. Sure, as a Suna kunoichi one was expected to learn how to seduce and tempt (one very effective way was fishnets which showed too little and too much, a perfect dichotomy) but Shikamaru seemed impervious to that. Like an old man, he seemed more attracted to the moves that she was making on his chessboard, instead of the moves she could make on his bed.

And of course there had been Shiho. Blonde, skinny, bespectacled Shiho. The little cryptography department girl who followed Shikamaru around like a puppy, hinting at her love for tulips and her everlasting love for him. Now usually Shikamaru's apathetic behavior towards her would have dissuaded Temari from believing that he could have feelings for her. However, the tulips he had brought to the cryptography department one summer's day had convinced her otherwise.

As a strategist, it irritated her to be absolutely and completely befuddled by a mere man. As a kunoichi, it angered her that a man wasn't being absolutely charmed by the coquettish moves she was making, especially since they had worked so well on most of her assassination missions. As a woman, it just confused her.

The only move forward was to engage an external actor in this game. "What!" Tenten shrieked when she heard about her ill-thought out plan, "you're going to cheat on him?"

"It's technically not cheating," Temari laughed, casually waving her hand. She was sloshed, three highballs and god knows how many shots had made her head spin and her creative juices flow. "We're not together." Casually sipping her drink, she smiled, "Besides, a girl needs sexual release."

She stumbled off her barstool and over to the nearest male figure in what she hoped was a sexy sashay. The bar was littered with them and they were ripe for the picking. "Hey," she whispered throatily. The man turned around and she watched as his pupil's dilated when he saw her in her fishnetted glory. This was step one, establishing primary attraction.

The next few steps were simple. They essentially entailed body language cues to signal attraction. Temari laughed and played with her hair while establishing eye contact. The man she was flirting with smiled and touched her on her arm.

His touch was nice. It was warm and his fingers were calloused, probably from years of kunai practice. They were so unlike Shikamaru's who were smooth and unhardened who due to overreliance on his wits and his kagemane was too damn lazy to try to expand his skill set. She touched his thigh. His breath pitched for a moment and his grip around her hip hardened.

"Ugh…"

She woke up the next morning dehydrated and groaning in a tangle of sheets. The tingle between her thighs told her of last night's sex and hinted that it had been good. "Fuck," she groaned as she noticed the scratches on her thighs. The man sure did like it rough.

But where was the man?

Temari hoped he had been courteous enough to leave without taking anything. If he did take anything, however, there would be a furious sand kunoichi on his tail and a high possibility that he would end up in a hospital with ribs broken. Wrapping the sheet around herself for decency's sake, she stumbled through her bedroom door and towards her living room to check for signs of his presence or hopefully, his leaving. The sight which instead greeted her made her stop in her tracks.

Two sheepish men sat in her living room drinking tea from _her _mugs. "She's up," she heard her one night stand say. _Fuck_, this was way more fucking awkward than any morning after talk she had to face.

"Erm, hi," she cringed, trying to look as casual as possible when wrapped in a bedsheet and staring at the man she had slept with and the man she worked with. "What are you doing here," she tried to ask in a professional voice, looking at Shikamaru.

He avoids her gaze. "I was supposed to bring you the files for the meeting with Tsunade later, Ryo, let me in."

_Ryo. _Great, now she knew the name of the greatest mistake she had made. And how could he look so pristine? Not a wrinkle in his uniform, not a hair out of place; damn she hated him already.

"Well, isn't that peachy fine," she replied in a strained voice. Her knuckles were as white as the bedsheet she was clenching. She hoped the smile on her face looked real enough and appreciative enough of Ryo's goddamn efforts at making her home, his home and opening her door to her fucking colleague and making this more uncomfortable than it already was. Why the hell wasn't he looking at her?

"I think I should leave," Ryo finally spoke up amidst the silence, "I've got a meeting with Kakashi and Gai in thirty minutes." He stood up and made his way for the door, "thanks for the great night," he graciously told her as he strode out of the door. Fucking asshole, he might have had a great night but she was not having the greatest morning.

She continued to stand in her corner. "Shikamaru," she began once she heard the close, "I don't know what to say."

He sighed and sank further back into his chair. The soft whine of the cushions filled the expanse of the room. "What can be said? You slept with someone and you had all right to." He was so calm, staring at her ceiling, pretending that he didn't walk into someone's one night stand.

"Yeah, I guess I did." She could have just let go of the sheet, she felt so naked in front of him. Was this guilt, she wondered, she had hardly felt this emotion in the past thirteen years. Cringing, she moved towards him and sank down on the seat which Ryo had once occupied. Maybe a face to face conversation where she forced him to acknowledge the fact that she had needs and wasn't just a mechanical killing machine was appropriate. "You know, he shouldn't even have opened my door, it was my apartment, he had no right." She tried to rant but the silent melancholy in the air was enough to silence her.

They were friends she tried to rationalize to herself. Friends caught other friends doing stupid things all the time. Like the time she had borne witness to Tenten getting into a bar fight with six men. Sure she had won but the damage done to the bar was disastrous. Or that time she had somehow gotten Kiba to call Chouji fat just for laughs. But this reproaching gaze that Shikamaru was trying to avert from her mingled with the tension in the room simply was not what friends gave others when sleeping with other people.

If they had truly been friends, Shikamaru would like Kiba probably try to give her a high five for landing such a good looking guy. Or maybe he'd just ignore the situation and bring her for breakfast after she had cleaned up. So technically, she had what she wanted. She knew that they were not just friends but this atmosphere was just bone-crushingly painful.

"Tenten told me you know," he began, breaking the apprehension that had filled the space between them. "She told me right after you left with him." Temari's eyes narrowed with irritation, blasted girl, why the fuck did she intervene.

"Told you what?" she asked, her head ringing with embarrassment and aggravation.

"Don't play dumb with me Temari, you're never so obtuse. She told me everything." His long fingers were now playing with the handle of the mug, his voice was still as neutral and level as could be.

This felt like a chess game. And Temari felt cornered almost as if he had called her bluff and seen through her cheap tricks and was going in for the checkmate. So the only move to make was to use her leverage. She blamed it on him. "I'm sorry," she cried, "I'm sorry for being so immature but there was no way to know, I just couldn't read you."

"Damnit woman," he slammed the mug on to the table, "you could have just asked."

"Just ask?" what was he thinking? Did he seriously assume that someone as powerful, as sought after as she would demean herself to do something as imbecilic as that. "No. I would not have asked and I will never ask, I'm the most powerful wind wielder in the whole of Suna, I'm the sister of the fifth Kazekage, daughter of the fourth," she looked upon him in disgust, "I'm not going to lower myself to that extent." She breathed, that had been a good answer. It was now no longer solely her fault.

Shikamaru was staring at the blank spot behind her, almost as if counting the cracks in the paint. "Is it all a game to you?" He finally looked at her, there was something reflected in his eyes which she did not quite understand nor could she pinpoint. "Is it always about power?"

She returned his look. Her life had been surrounded by fights of life and death. First with her father and Gaara, then with the random mission targets she had been chosen to kill, then with the Sunian high council when she fought for Gaara as Kazekage and then again with the high council over her position as the Kazekage's advisor. It was always about power. She never did know how to explain how to her and to her father and the rest of Suna, pyric victories were still victories. So she answered him simply and honestly.

"Yes."

"I don't know how to win this game," the boy in front of her sighed, he rubbed his eyes tiredly, "I don't know, this isn't shougi, this isn't war."

"I'm sorry," she replied, "I don't know how to either."

She looked at the young man before her, tired and filled with ennui. Pity, coursed through her, it wasn't his fault that he had to like, maybe that word hadn't been strong enough, or love, maybe that word had been too strong, or felt something in the middle of like and love for her. She was wind and air, intangible, never conforming, unattainable.

"Maybe," she ventured, "it doesn't matter."

Because if she was broken and he was never quite whole in the first place, they could fill each other the same way two halves made a whole. And maybe if they were just so imperfect as people, they could be like two negatives and make a positive.

"You're bloody troublesome," he said to her, giving her a small smile and his patented eye roll, commiserations for the mire she had placed herself and inadvertently him in.

"I know," she told him, "but you're troublesome too."


	6. Ring

Ring

The recent reshuffling in diplomatic duties with the appointment of the new Raikage had been a headache for Shikamaru. It essentially meant meeting the new ambassador and creating new ties with unfamiliar people. Hence it was a consolation when the new ambassador turned out to be a somewhat familiar face.

"Atsui," he greeted the pale man before him, "I haven't seen you since the war ended." Atsui had hardly changed since the war, aside from a few more unnoticeable scars on his arms, he remained as muscular and neat as ever. His uniform was pristine, with not a crinkle or wrinkle, and he seemed just as impatient as ever, his feet were tapping with impatient excitement, awaiting his arrival.

"Nara," Atsui replied, a cheshire cat grin hanging on his face, "it's good to see you." Taking Shikamaru's hand, he gripped it in a firm handshake. The memories were now flooding back to him, Atsui the impulsive soldier who fought for life with a vigour that few could match, one of the few soldiers who had actually played shougi with him during the war and lost amidst wails of "why are you so hot", the man who he could bum cigarettes off. "Aren't we supposed to go for some official lunch eh? Why are we meeting here" he continued, derisively pointing towards the stall he was standing in front of.

Shikamaru groaned inwardly, this was going to be awkward to say the least. "Ah yes…"he laughed awkwardly, "Naruto decided that official lunches were too pretentious, so we're having some real Konoha food as part of the cultural experience." That was a lie, a completely politically correct lie. The Konohan budget had been almost depleted by the war, hence austerity measures were now being enforced and the extravagant diplomatic buffets and dinners that had once entertained guests from the other villages were now replaced… with Ichiraku Ramen. As embarrassing as it was, the Konohan diplomatic team had now repackaged the stall to become an integral part of Konohan history and culture in order preserve the remnants of the village's political clout. It was still absolute bullshit though.

"Hot!" Atsui remarked, "I love ramen. Does Ichiraku by any chance have veal?" Shikamaru closed his eyes in irritation. It was a street-side store, was Atsui seriously dense enough to believe that some ramshackle hut which served cheap ramen was going to serve veal. Instead of showing his irritation any further, he forced a smile and replied.

"No, it's all very traditional Konohan food. So we'll have tofu and a bit of seafood, it's good for the palate." Bullshit. Bullshit, absolute fucking bullshit. This was so tiresome and troublesome, he was now the Hokage's assistant, did he seriously still have to act as some tour guide and lie through his teeth about how great and glorious his absolutely bankrupt village was?

Yes, he did. Because Naruto had immediately used the rapport he had created with Temari as a goddamn excuse to force diplomatic duties upon him, despite the fact that he could have used his time in a more constructive manner, such as playing shougi with the new Anbu recruits. Shougi, had after all been proven to be an integral tool in teaching strategy. Or the fact that there were many other reputable jounin in Konoha like Sakura or Hinata or Lee who could have escorted Atsui around with ease. No, Naruto was probably trying to rile him up again, just for kicks.

Upon entering the bright and over lit establishment, they were seated in a small booth. After having served Konoha for generations, the new promotion of Ichiraku as a heritage site had almost given Teuchi an aneurysm from the excitement. He had expanded his restaurant by creating al fresco dining seats and subdividing booths even further to create even more claustrophobic little booths to seat more customers. It was a terrible idea, Ichiraku had now become a fire hazard.

The place was hot and uncomfortable and filled with the smell of used cooking oil. His head was pounding from the smell, his back uncomfortably damp from the heat.

"So Nara," Atsui seemed more than keen on engaging in meaningless small talk instead of delving into more official matters such as the signing of the free trade agreement. This was troublesome, Shikamaru had hoped that Atsui would have immediately acceded to the treaty and then they could be done and enjoy their meal in peace. "Who's the lucky lady?" He pointed to the silver ring which Shikamaru wore on the slim silver chain on his neck.

"No one," Shikamaru replied, "I'm not married." It was technically the truth, he still wasn't married.

But Atsui persisted, "Come on Nara, I'll sign the papers once you tell me if you really did shack it up with that Sand chick."

Shikamaru gave a small forced chuckle, "I'm serious Atsui, I'm not married to Temari. So if you could just sign the papers now."

"Then who does the ring belong to?"

"It's Temari's"

"So you did shack up with the sand chick," Atsui clucked his tongue and fumbled in his kunai pouch for a pen. Smiling lackadaisically, Shikamaru merely extended the papers for the agreement.

"Not exactly."

He and Temari were not married. Even with Shikadai being born and all, they still were not married, simply because Temari had turned him down every time. I still want to be a sand shinobi, she had told him, pushing the ring box back to him, marrying you will just break everything that I live for. He could make her stay in Konoha but he could never truly take the Suna out of her, he should have known and expected this but he still proposed three more times just in case she changed her mind. It had been wishful thinking of course. But he did still carry around those overly romantic notions of marriage which Kurenai, his mother and Ino had so readily encouraged. And besides with the new housing policy, marriage was a simple way to get cheap housing in a good location. He was simply being pragmatic. And initially, he had expected her to see it his way.

But after failing time after time, he simply stopped asking. He just accepted the fact that Temari and him would never be married and allowed her to bounce around between the two villages. That was of course until Gaara had the sense and the compassion to set up a permanent Sunan embassy in Konoha. He never thought he would like the Kazekage as much as he had did then when he heard of what the man had done.

"You two are one fucked up couple," Atsui gave him a strange look and smiled, breaking his train of thought, "don't you two have a kid or something?"

"Yeah we do," Shikamaru returned the look with a soft smile, his fingers touching the ring with sentimentality. The ring was supposed to be Temari's but since she didn't want it, he would just keep it until she did.


	7. Professional

Temari arrived two days after the funeral dressed in a dark purple yukata which she had found stowed away in the back of her wardrobe. It smelt of moth balls and probably needed mending, especially at the sides, she always tore her dresses by fiddling with them too much when she got nervous or irritated. Six months had passed since she had worn the dress to a funeral or almost worn it to a funeral, in truth and she never admitted to anyone else, she had walked away from Chiyo's funeral before the session had even started. By then she had almost torn the cloth of her yukata and the pads of her fingers were already indented with the little half-moons of her nails. She had said that it was because Kankurou needed her at the hospital mentioning some absolutely fictitious allergic reaction to beetroot; Gaara knew that it was more than that and had let her leave.

This was no sentimentality nor despair at losing a surrogate mother figure. This merely came as part of her natural distaste for losing people close to the Kazekage; with Chiyo now gone, another integral supporter of the kazekage amongst the council of elders was now gone and many of the impudent elders like Shinamura would have the gall to challenge his authority. Temari had then closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and accepted the loss of her mentor.

She was supposed to be in Konoha, again; the little ramshackle village which she was supposed to be a diplomat to. This time, the reason wasn't something as comfortable or administrative like the chuunin exams where she could breeze and skim through the details with ease. This time, the reason was the funeral of a jounin, Asuma Sarutobi. Sure he had been a pretty nice and easy going guy and Shikamaru did seem to like him but he was just a jounin. But Gaara wanted her there because the man had once been part of the Twelve Guardian Ninjas and had been the heir of one of Konoha's most venerable clans, hence the formalities would begin and cursory insincere speeches and compliments given. It was a charade she was good at but particularly despised, hence Gaara's loving and understanding choice to never assign her to these things. Gaara and loving, the thought of it almost made her laugh; her little brother had been so sweet and stoic about it and even asked her if she wanted to go. She had accepted of course with a shrug and a smile. Konoha was now her responsibility so there was no reason or way for her to shirk it.

At the Konoha gates, she had half expected him to be waiting for her with half lidded eyes, a tired yawn and a voice laced with ennui. But when no one appeared, she assumed that it was because he had been given leave by the hokage on compassionate grounds, after all it was Asuma who had trained him, believed in him and treated him like a son. The sky was blue that day and the air was sweet with the smell of summer, Temari wrinkled her nose in distaste, the air was too humid and wet, she preferred the dry, harsh air of Suna.

With her head held high and her fan on her back, she strode to the hokage's office to offer her condolences. Konohan villagers avoided her like the plague, upon seeing the blonde woman stride in their way with disdain in her eye, they scuttled away like rats.

Typical, so Konohan. Even her guide's favorite jutsu seal was a rat.

"Ah Temari-san," Tsunade called to her from a roadside stall. The hokage was at a dingy looking hut drinking what seemed to be cheap liquor at nine in the morning. Temari sighed, she was a liaison to this goddamn shabby little village which was supposed to be Suna's greatest ally. Could they offer Suna anything economically? No. Could they fight with will gall and bloodlust in their eyes? No. Could they stomach the deaths of their comrades and not turn into a mottled pile of tears and snot? Evidently not. She smirked at the memory of the crying boy outside his friend's hospital ward. How absolutely pathetic, why was Suna even allied with Konoha? They could have gotten so much more out of an alliance with Kumo which hated Konoha, was rich or probably even richer than Suna and had a strong and ruthless army. In these troubled times, they were what Suna needed. Not the sentimental little backwater called Konoha. Pressing her face into a sad pout in what Temari considered her most sympathetic and sweetest face possible, she made her way to the hokage.

"Tsunade sama, I was here to express my condolences. The Sarutobi clan has always been such an integral part of Konohan life and the death of its heir must have been saddening to say the least, Suna too feels greatly…" Temari was interrupted by the Hokage's tired wave of her hand.

"I've heard all that diplomatic nonsense before," Tsunade sighed, "and now I'm going to have to deal with four more dead ninjas in approximately two days and one was an ex Anbu captain."

"I'm so sorry to hear about that," Temari lowered her tone and tried to make her harsh voice sound as emphatic as possible, "surely they are competent enough to make it out alive." Seriously, this was so Konohan. This absolute sentimentality, this was war, ninjas were soldiers and the general of the army could not be possibly so upset and distraught over the deaths of four mere men.

"They're up against Akatsuki, of course they're dead," Tsunade took another draught of her sake, "damn this tastes like piss, why the fuck do I still drink this?" she slurred. Wonderful, the hokage was drunk. At nine in the morning. Temari almost rolled her eyes.

"You should be more upset you know," the woman continued in a condescending voice. Temari's back stiffened, shinobi were never supposed to show a drop of emotion. What was this woman thinking? Her smiled almost slipped. However, as the calm and gentle diplomat which she had disciplined herself to be, she lifted her eyebrows and asked in her most concerned voice.

"Oh no, why?"

"Shikamaru's on the mission." Tsunade took a final draught from her bottle and gestured to the shopkeeper for more bottles.

Calm yourself down, she told herself, as she forced down restive emotions within her. How could they send a chuunin after Akatsuki? A mere chuunin. He would be killed, no not just killed, skinned, decapitated, bifurcated, minced. The Akatsuki had taken down Anbu squads, they had taken down Kankurou who was more than Anbu material, they had goddamn Hoshigakure Kisame and she had seen him annihilate an entire village based on nothing but his bloodlust. What the fuck was Konoha thinking? And what was worse was that this loss was completely unjustified. Shikamaru would have made a brilliant leader, he could have brought their village out of the mess they called their economic state. Naturally, she was thinking about what was best for Suna, after all, a strong Konoha would make a stronger Suna.

There was nothing she could do but to dissuade Tsunade. "I'm sure he will be fine," she said, her fingers once again beginning to twirl and scratch at the fabric of her yukata, "he's intelligent enough to get himself out of sticky situations."

Tsunade nodded dismissively at her and waited for her next drink. Sighing, Temari carried on forward, allowing her feet to take her along the unknown path to an unknown destination. He was really going to die wasn't he? The boy who had defeated her at the chuunin exams, the boy she had saved from the genjutsu flute girl, the boy, no, man who had shown her around the village and combated her sarcastic irony with dry humor. Something welled up inside her and Temari frowned, fiddling with the side of her yukata. This was purely indignance, she told herself, that Konoha would sacrifice such a beautiful mind in vain.


	8. On crybabies

It was a peaceful afternoon, the air was silent from the nagging of hokages, irritated mothers and angry blonde sand jounin and fragrant with the scent of springtime flowers. Settled next to him in the knee high grass was a very uncharacteristically silent Temari, staring into the expanse of the blue sky. He sighed, this was the life, clouds floating above him like cotton in the azure sea, it was breathtaking.

"Eh crybaby,"Temari broke the silence with a characteristic taunt, "this is pretty great."

He was surprised at the sudden compliment coming from his usually aggressive and sardonic counterpart, this soft side of her particularly epitomized through her soft tone and her somewhat Woodsworthian nature with her golden hair untied and streaming through the grass and fingers twined around a dandelion stirred something within him which unsettled the young chuunin. With his machismo at stake, he did what any man or boy attempting to be a man would have done in response to such a jibe.

"Tch," he scowled, "I'm not a crybaby."

She sat up, shaking stray bits of grass from her blonde hair. It shimmered in the light, floating around her head like a halo. "Compared to some of the men I've dated, I suppose you're not?" A soft smile surfaced for a moment and the hardness of her expression and the usual cruelness of her eyes evaporated. Shikamaru noted that she could have been beautiful if she tried, alas, she was no Ino and never did. Her declaration left him shocked, Sabaaku no Temari, dating a weak and fragile man.

The expression of shock on his face alongside the knitted eyebrows must have alerted her about how disconcerting this piece of information was. Obviously irritated, Temari began pulling out tufts of grass, her fingers twining around their thin stems. "Well, I thought he was… the strong and silent sort and I was wrong. The first time he cried, I thought he was like you just…"

"Just what?"

"Unexpectedly fragile," she sighed, "He was reasonably intelligent so I suppose I thought more of him." A small frown was edging its way on to her brow and the curve of her lips, "I was wrong, he treated me more as a mother and an emotional support instead of a woman." Another sigh escaped from those red red lips, Temari tilted her head to the sky, Shikamaru could see her angular clavicles so deep he could almost sip wine from them. "He wanted hugs and kisses but I could never give them."

"He doesn't sound like a shinobi." He remarked, at a loss of what else to say.

"He wasn't," smiling nostalgically, she recollected, "just some boy working as an accountant in Gaara's office. He was sweet, hated walking, hated playing shougi but I used to think that he was somewhat like you."

He jolted up, stunned at the last bit of her statement. Turning to look at the woman next to him, he watched her with narrowed eyes, "what did you say?"

She flushed, obviously aware of her mistake. "'He hated playing shougi?"

"Yeah, I guess," he replied, settling down on his elbows once again, unwilling to break the calmness of the moment with the complications that arose with unnecessary feelings. The cumulative weight of his romantic expectations and hers alongside the diplomatic obligations which both of them faced as shinobi from their respective villages was merely going to strain the tenuous peace they had forged with shougi and cheap ramen. "For what it's worth," he continued, "I would love hugs and kisses from you too."

Temari snorted, the unladylike gesture finally broke the spell which had transformed her into a woodland nymph, reverting her to the regular obnoxiously proud and devastatingly powerful jounin which he knew and… liked. "I'm not the sort to go about kissing in public and playing your goddamn mother."

"Woman, you are ten times more terrifying than my mother."

The smile which lit up Temari's face could have lit a thousand bulbs and his heart a thousand times. This woman who was aggravated by the silliest things and compliments by the strangest of comparisons, who was so troublesome and so calm when watching the clouds, was so absolutely beautiful even in her absent-minded demeanour. He felt something twinge within him and ignored it, instead pointing to a distant cloud and remarking.

"Now that looks like a crying baby."


	9. Patriotism

As the moon rose and cast its phophorous glow over the battlefield, the winds howled louder with a vengence and a vehemence that could only rival it yielder. In the middle of dancing shadows, rubble and bodies was a singular blonde woman, her hair undone and wavering in the wind, in her calloused and scarred hands a large and equally battered fan. A feral cry emerged from her throat and resounded in the wind as her gusts caught another man and another spray of blood filled the air and splattered against her skin. Ivory and scarlet, beautiful in its savagery.

His hands rearranged themselves into the familiar seal and felt the comfortable twinge as his shadow stretched and expanded towards her. From the darkness, as his shadows rushed towards her, he watched as the moonlight caught her eye and almost smiled in nostalgia at the viciousness which she emanated. She was so unaware, her body still twisted in her mangled fan dance.

The next twinge, a warm rush of blood to his hands warned him of her capture. And he watched as her body stiffened, her eyes widening with shock and then narrowing with disdain, that twist of her mouth moving to voice his name with venom.

"Nara."

"Hello Temari," he casually called, stepping out of the backstage and into the spotlight of her attention. "I see you're having fun killing Konohan sodliers." Her hair was still that same dirty blonde, the colour of withered grass, her eyes as alive as ever, blue green in warmth, crystal green ice in battle. Temari's grimace twisted itself into a familiar smirk.

"Nara, always hiding in the shadows eh." If she could have placed her hand on her hip, she would have. "So how will you kill me?" she pressed, an eyebrow quirking with disdain. He stretched and scratched his head, almost sighing in his tiredness.

"I'm sorry that this had to happen." He muttered, glancing at her scuffed feet.

Her eyes turned warm, "we are already so cliche, stop making it worse." A small bubble of laughter emerged from her and his heart stopped cold at the warmth in her voice.

"What do you mean Tem?" he asked, voice thick with emotion, drinking in the final sight of her.

"Star crossed lovers, Madame Butterfly, Romeo and Juliet," she smirked, voice filled with condescension. "Just kill me now and save me the sentimentality, we all know what is unsaid."

Heart frozen, blood crawling through his veins, his hands curled around an invisible kunai by his side, while her long slender one twirled round a tangible, iron one. "Goodbye Tem," he murmurred, drawing the invisible weapon down his throat.

"Goodbye, I'll be seeing you," she laughed, mirroring his actions until she began choking on her blood, the smile still remaining on her face.

He could only smile as her crumpled body hit the ground, her skin marred with blood both hers and the blood of his fellow villagemen. She had to die, he told himself, it was his duty but looking at her prone and vulnerable body, drained of all emotion and sardonic taunts, he almost questioned himself.

His hands glanced a bulge in his pocket, the silver lighter which Asuma had left. "The will of fire," he muttered to himself, forcing his feet aware from her body, "the will of fire." She would have probably done the same as well.


	10. Proposal

It was in the middle of a bitter Konohan winter and the first time he had seen in her in three months. Shikamaru glanced surreptitiously at the woman sitting cross-legged before him, focusing intently on the cracked and faded chess board that was set between them. Temari looked the same as ever, rugged, scarred, determined and frustrated that she was unable to find any opening. Shikamaru noted her index finger, irritatedly tapping against the table, a sign that her analytical mind was whirring. The silence between them was tense with Temari's natural aggression but it was comfortable, part and parcel of their interractions.

"Fuck this, I don't know how to carry on." She declared, slamming down the bishop she had picked up, initially attempting to use it to extricate her king out of check.

Shikamaru laughed, his eyes crinkling with pleasure at her indignant expression. "It's not called checkmate for nothing Temari." He cleared his throat and looked as the blonde woman shrugged and merely reset her pieces. "By the way…" he continued, aching to change the subject matter but obviously uncomfortable with it.

"No." Temari interrupted him. Averting all eye contact with the man seated before her, she merely occupied herself in rearranging the pieces, toying with each of them in the lazy, over confidence which characterized her playing style.

"I haven't even told you what I wanted," Shikamaru protested, his eyebrows knotting themselves in puzzlement. Temari, raised her sandy head to look at him, the pointed gaze, the somewhat amused smile, spelled her expectation for his request.

"I'm not getting married to you." Her reply was cold, direct and commanding but her eyes were soft, filled with what seemed like regret but he knew was pity. He could drown in those blue-green eyes. "I belong to Suna and Suna alone."

He could have almost huffed in irritation. Typical Temari, she would always put her job and her goddamn dusty and sweltering hot village over everything else in her life. The worst part was that it was not her brothers or her friends which he would play second fiddle to, it was the abstract construction of a Sunan identity. And while he understood that being a soldier came with these detriments, Temari was not a soldier, she was too intelligent to fall for the rhetoric of nationalism and patriotism. But unfortunately, she did.

"_Temari, how do people in Suna propose?" he asked. It was a hot Konohan summer, the air was heavy with condensation and the smell of the Sakura blossoms which littered the streets. In the background of his heavy voice, he could hear the whirring of the electric fan and the orchestra of crickets amongst the Nara forrest. Temari sat on the floor of his spartan room with him, sipping a cup of cold tea with grace and delicacy which spelled her background in Sunan royalty._

_She smiled at his question. It was not one of those predatory, feral grins she gave when they sparred or had sex. It was one more gentle, almost anticipatory in its nature. "Well," she breathed, her shoulders rising and falling with the deep breath, "they typically give the girl a flower."_

"_A flower?" he laughed, "isn't that a bit too feminine for the Sunan palate?"_

_A derisive snort came from her. "Of course but it's tradition. A glass flower is made, typically a rose or a tulip." Temari's smile turned nostalgic, "my mother's flower was a peony flower." She stretched her fingers and felt the crack in her joints, "glass is used because it's a representation of the ideal marriage, binding, transparent and always," she turned her head to look at him, her dark eyes penetrating into his, "always loyal to the sand."_

_Never breaking eye contact with the blonde woman, Shikamaru placed the box he had kept by his side for the entire day in front of her nudging her to open it. She did, her tan fingers, rough with years of fan-wielding snaked over the box, tearing it open. Within it, surrounded by deep purple velvet was a single glass cala lily. _

_Initially, Shikamaru had assumed that the flared nostrils, the widened eyes and the slack jaw which Temari exhibited had been shock that came from the joy of being proposed to. He was partially right. Temari was shocked but she was most certainly not happy. With a grace that surpassed no other, she turned him down and continued her chess game with him. _

"Yeah I know," he replied the irate woman sitting across him. Her arms crossed defensively across her more than ample chest. "You turned me down that summer, remember." Shikamaru gave her a pained smile, hoping to wrangle a little sympathy out of the iron woman he had the pleasure and pain of loving.

"Don't try me, Shikamaru. You know what the answer will always be." She shot him a look, the one she gave with her eyebrows knitted together, the smirk slightly more irate than smug. It was a defiant gesture that came from a natural rebel.

He sighed. "It's not marriage I'm proposing." The look of shock on Temari's face made him smirk. Giving another theatrical sigh, he drew out a heavy catalog which he kept under the chessboard. Flipping it to the dogeared page, he tilted his head towards her ironically. "Pick one."

The catalog's page was adorned colourfully with pictures of dressers and wardrobes. Temari's expression grew more quizzical. Her eyes narrowed with confusion and suspicion.

"What."

"Pick a dresser woman," he drawled, "if you're going to keep shuffling between Suna and Konoha, you might as well keep some of you stuff here so you can travel light."

Her eye roll may have screamed her amusement at this situation. However, the genuinely soft smile that overcame her face convinced him that it was more than pure amusement.

And outside the snow had just began to fall.


	11. Seasonal love

Frost and cold nipped away at the tips of his ears. Shikamaru shivered miserably in his coat, looking forlornly at the smiling blond woman who was seated across him.

"Really woman?" he grumbled, huddling closer into his coat, his coffee left untouched due to his unwillingness to remove his hands from the inner pockets of his coat. "Do we have to coffee alfresco in the winter?"

Gracefully sipping the coffee from the dainty little cup which lay before her, Temari Sabaaku gave him a patronizing smile. Shifting her gaze to stare at him with those penetrating blue green eyes, she said, "I live in a hot-as-hell desert, you should be ashamed of yourself for not being able to take the cold." She placed the cup gently on a saucer and proceeded to inspect him like a scientist viewing a microbe of some sort.

Reasonably agitated, Shikamaru scowled. "Woman it hits below minus twenty degrees centigrade at night in Suna, of course you would be fine with the winter cold." His ears were feeling numb, was this the primary onset of frostbite? Glaring at Temari's everwidening grin, he felt the growing need to whine so that the all-powerful and domineering woman would finally allow the both of them to get out of the cold and enter the nice, heated inside of the cafe which she had insisted on visiting. "Besides, do we really have to dine alfresco? In the middle of the cold?"

Interlacing her fingers, Temari leaned forward towards him. "Of course," she murmurred and Shikamaru found himself intrigued by the little wisps of smoke which escaped from her pink lips. "I saw this in a movie and I thought it would be nice if we had a similar moment."

"What?" Shikamaru snorted, still huddled within his jacket. "Isn't that just a teensy weensy little bit too cliche for you?" The cold metal surface of his chair was biting through his coat into his ass and he swore that he could literally feel the blood in his veins freezing into blocks of ice.

Rolling her eyes, a scowl began to grace Temari's soft features. "I just thought that it would be nice if we could be couply and shit for a while." She explained sneering as her lip gradually curled deeper into her features.

Shikamaru sighed, "you're never this romance oriented"

"Well, I thought it'd be good if I started to be," she retorted, "besides this would be the sort of shit we look back with fondness and I would like my memories to be filled with Nicholas Sparks-esque sort of scenes instead of arguing all the damn time, thank you very much." she sniffed, though he was unsure if it was with irritation or due to the goddamn cold.

Damn woman, Shikamaru thought. Temari was usually reasonable, a thinker, someone who analyzed situations and was capable of understanding how stupid these situations were. "Woman, I have allergies and I am freezing my butt off in the cold, I doubt this will be some landmark moment in our relatinoship."

Temari shrugged casually and then began wounding her violet scarf tighter around her neck. "True true but it's still amuzing to watch you squirm in the cold," she replied with that little triumphant smirk on her face. Damn, he almost exclaimed, this was just a beautiful beautiful example of how whipped he was.

Sniffling piteously, he glared at her from his seat. "You owe me a game of shougi," he muttered, still sniffling. Watching as she rolled her eyes with mock disdain and amusement, he hope that this would be an image of what they considered to be bliss that they would remember forever.


	12. Seasonal love II

"You want us to do what?" Temari choked as she stared at the dark haired man lounging on her couch, the length of his body sprawled across it lazily.

Shikamaru stared up at the irate woman who was glaring daggers down at him, "I'm just saying that we should go to Times Square on Christmas eve and join the countdown." He replied nonchalenty despite Temari's eyes narrowing with disbelief and suspicion.

"Are you joking?" Temari asked again cautiously as she began to pace up and down the room. It was a reflex, everytime something puzzled or troubled her, she began to pace. It was a brilliant means to work off the nervous energy as she began to formulate a plan.

Her pacing grew in fervour as her fiance replied with a bewildered frown on his face and a confused lilt to his voice. "No?"

She had to dissuade him, remind him that doing something as pointless as going to Times square on Christmas Eve went against everything he stood for in life, his principles, his fundamental nature. "It's going to be crowded and traffic is going to be terrible and the noise... why do you even want us to do this?" She asked her hands cutting through the air with force. Goddamn, she was ranting, losing control of her thought process. But oh damnit, she hated going to Times Square on Christmas Eve.. Firstly because traffic was terrible as stated earlier. Secondly because it was crowded also as stated earlier. Thirdly because there would be loads of drunk people which was terrible. And did she mention that she hated it when people jostled against her and stole her air as well as the rest of her possessions. Temari had been pickpocketed before at Times Square on Christmas Eve and there was no way in hell she was repeating that experience... without alcohol.

Shikamaru's lazy, drawled out reply shocked her. "Well, you said that you wanted some landmark moment to remember... and a kiss at Times Square on Christmas Eve is as landmark as it can get." Eyes widening with surprise, Temari felt heat pool in the middle of her stomach and her lips stretching into an impossibly large grin.

"You idiot." She replied turning away from him. She could hear him repositioning his weight as he turned to face her back probably in anticipatino for what was coming next. "We don't need to have something as cliche as that to commemorate us."

She heard a soft sigh of relief escape his lips. Her eyes brightened, she knew it! There was no way in hell he would have wanted to do something as stupid and pointless as that.

"We need something more special, something that screams us," Temari dramatically turned back to him with a smile growing on her lips. There was a growing terror in Shikamaru's eyes as he began to grasp how much more troublesome this particular situation which he got himself in was gong to be. "Let's go to Venezuela."

"Venezuela?" he coughed out, evidently surprised at her choice of location, "Why Venezuela?"

"Because no one goes to Venezuela." Temari replied, growing increasingly excited at the prospect. "Plus it's warm which will help you and your allergies." She laughed almost mockingly at him.

"There's a reason why they don't go there Temari," he replied tiredly, "it's troublesome to arrange for visas and so on." She could almost see him rubbing his brows with a tired hand, looking for a way to extricate himself from the situation.

Temari turned on him, "but a kiss at the world's largest waterfall, that's about as landmark as it can get." Smirking triumphantly, she turned his own words on to him and watched as the supposed genius struggled to deal with the situation.

"Can't that just be our vacation plan for next year so we have more time to plan?" was his practical rebuttal. And it almost made her wilt inside because of how logical and reasonable his retort had been.

Turning around to glare at him, Temari scowled. "Where is your spontaneity?"

"I have none," was his dry reply, "I rather watch Tarrantino movies, play shougi and get drunk on Christmas Eve instead of doing anything much." Cautiously glancing up at her and noticing the frown which still remained on her face he continued, "I'm sure you do too."

"You have a point," she finally conceeded. Sighing with relief that the issue of an exorbitant trip to Venezuela had been finally laid down to rest, Shikamaru almost laughed with joy. Although that was shortlived.

"We're still going," Temari remarked, poking him between the ribs, "I want my goddamn landmark romantic moment."

His only reply was him closing his eyes and a mumbled, "troublesome."


End file.
